New Music From Jaap Blonk, Greenberger & Prime Lens
Jaap Blonk
Joyous Junctures
(Eh?)
Many years ago, this writer and certain friends had a form of micro-humor, involving attempts to crack each other up by uttering just a single carefully selected word, such as “oval” or “trousers”. It wasn’t the word’s meaning that mattered—it was the sound of the word and the delivery.
This came to mind while considering the work of Dutch vocalist Jaap Blonk, who was profoundly influenced by early 20th century sound poetry from the Dada art movement. In particular, Blonk had a fascination with Kurt Schwitters’ ever-evolving “Ursonate” (excerpt: “Lanke trr gll / Pe pe pe pe pe / Ooka ooka ooka ooka”), which Blonk recorded in 1986 and performed when opening for the Stranglers, receiving a less-than-warm reception of taunts and thrown beer containers.
Blonk’s new hour-long, 27-track album Joyous Junctures, released on cassette and digitally, hits the listener from a dizzying array of angles. Occasionally accompanying Blonk’s daredevil, nonsensical vocals (singing both real and invented words) are strange synthesized tones and noises, seemingly attempting to match the oddball nature of Blonk’s vocals, and peculiar duets form, including “Agreeable Argument” which features Blonk’s vocals mirroring a weird synth onslaught—or is it the synth mimicking his vocals?
“Debate Rising” sounds like a mounting conversation between R2-D2 and a man panting and desperately gasping for breath, and “Hidden Skirmishes” is confrontational and abrasive, with Blonk providing an insane assortment of feral mouth sounds along with sharp, piercing tones.
When staying in a hotel room, sometimes the muffled conversations from next-door inhabitants can be heard, and from the tone and manner of the voices, it’s often possible to understand what is being communicated even if the words themselves aren’t discernible.
This type of implied communication comes through on several tracks on Joyous Junctures, from the guttural growls of “Morning Ghosts” that seem to be part of a sinister invocation, to others that drift by in a meditative reverie.
Blonk’s pieces are bewildering and wildly unconventional, but like Dada art, there can be a comical joy in being lost in the depths of absurdity and confusion.
David Greenberger and Prime Lens
It Happened to Me
(PelPel)
Having been acquainted with the work of David Greenberger and his long-running project The Duplex Planet—manifested in zines, comics, albums featuring monologues and music, and more—since the ‘90s, this writer had a revelatory moment just last year when understanding how it all works together.
For more than four decades, Greenberger has been collecting conversations with elderly people, with varying topics and emotions, going from the deeply moving to the colorfully amusing with everything in between. Among the most affecting pieces are the ones dealing with aging itself—health concerns, and how one might be limited in certain ways, such as not being able to drive.
The thing to understand and accept is that people do different things at different stages of their lives, and there should be a dignity to this, without intrinsic pity toward the end. In an issue of The Duplex Planet, Penn Jillette recalls a conversation he had with Greenberger about Jillette’s aging parents, where Greenberger explained that “you need to love them for who they are now and not mourn the loss of who they were.”
As represented on Greenberger’s massive new 140-minute album It Happened to Me, created with the ensemble Prime Lens, the words from elderly people in Santa Ana, Calif.—all recited by Greenberger in his own voice—are not simply oral histories or stories; they’re recent conversations, documenting current reflections or lenses through which the past is observed.
With cover art by Ed Ruscha, the sprawling album fills two CDs, and a vinyl edition is also available with a subset of tracks plus a download card for the entire 60-track album.
This is not an objective, critical review—the list of conflicts of interest here is vast—but instead, consider this an observational piece from your humble narrator.
Musically, It Happened to Me could serve as a sort of eclectic yet selective survey of 20th Century popular music, with primary composer and keyboardist Tyson Rogers, percussionist Bob Stagner and bassist Evan Lipson effortlessly shifting between genres, conveying a jaunty, pert spirit or a pensive mood as required by each monologue.
As with other Greenberger albums, the issues of time and health concerns loom, but Greenberger always manages to spotlight fresh perspectives. On “Start Over”, an immigrant explains how death is feared and respected more in Thailand and discusses assimilation and identity, and “Back to Kentucky” concerns the overlooked logistics of dealing with someone with Alzheimer’s.
A mother embraces her age on “Suddenly: Bam!” when discussing her daughter moving out, but she acknowledges the never-ending surprises of parenthood and constant doubt of trying to be a good parent. One of the most insightful moments is on “How Long”, where an African immigrant explains, in the context of racism, “Sometimes in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, you still hold onto one thing” and that people can be pushed to their limits over a lifetime.
However, the album begins on a cheery, optimistic note with Francine Harris’ declaration that “I’m getting better. I’m getting there. I’m claiming everything as a ‘yes’,” as a prime example of living in the moment.